If you aren't totally tapped out by holiday gifting, take a gander at Friday's bidding for what is expected to be the most expensive book ever sold at auction: John James Audubon's Birds of America.

The set of four rare tomes, each more than three feet in height, will go under the gavel this week at Christie's New York. Heirs of the Duke of Portland—who is believed to have bought one of only 200 first editions after 1838, when printing was completed—are selling the volumes.

Avian Ask: The last auction of a full set of Birds of America fetched $11.5 million, a record for a book sold at auction.
Courtesy of Christie's

Tom Lecky, Christie's head of books and manuscripts, estimates the original set of 435 etched and aquatint plates of U.S. bird species, which took 11 years to produce, then cost about $1,000. The auction house estimates that the work will fetch $7 million to $10 million this time around. Bids for another full set of Birds of America reached $11.5 million when it was sold by Sotheby's in London in 2010. Lecky says that set, known as the Hesketh, was estimated at less than the Duke of Portland's volumes. Christie's auctioned another set in 2000 for $8.8 million.

Lecky notes that, over the years, special cabinets have been constructed to house the volumes, whose dimensions were dictated by Audubon's insistence on life-sized illustrations. Paradoxically, the volumes, icons of American culture, were printed in England, and many subscriptions ended up in aristocratic circles in Europe, where the self-taught Audubon followed the money.

Birds should still rule the roost: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales sold in 1998 for just $6.8 million.

Thursday 19

Look for December housing starts of 710,000, on strength in multifamily building, says Steve Blitz, senior economist at ITG Investment Research. He sees the monthly increase in consumer prices running at less than 0.1%, versus no change in November.